Kathleen Wynne ties her fortunes to the Big Move's big gamble

When an Ontario election comes, which could be at any time, it appears possible it will play out as a referendum on taxes versus transportation.

Premier Kathleen Wynne, having presumably sniffed the wind, insists she’s determined to put a plan before the province that would trade a raft of revenue enhancements (one of the many cute euphemisms for tax increases) for the promise of reduced gridlock in and around the country’s biggest city.

“There is no doubt that we need to build transit so that we can grow the economy of the province,” she said Wednesday, days after the provincial transit agency Metrolinx revealed its proposals for new money-raising taxes and fees.

“There has not been a commitment by the provincial government in this province for decades to a dedicated, on-going build of transit. We’re going to make that commitment.”

The Metrolinx plan is rife with bold talk of “an integrated transportation system that enhances our quality of life, our environment and our prosperity,” but whether any of it will end the daily gridlock on the 401 remains open to question.

It’s either a gutsy move, or utter foolishness from the point of view of a premier who has yet to be elected and would obviously like to win her first mandate. Conservative leader Tim Hudak has made clear the Tories are opposed to the price tag — $2 billion a year, or $50 billion over 25 years — and the means of raising the money. NDP leader Andrea Horwath is similarly opposed, although for different, NDP-type reasons (she sees traffic jams as class struggles and thinks the rich should pay).

Wynne has also hinted at the positioning the Liberals will take in making their argument. It will be all about the economy, as in: we need better transit and less congestion to return Toronto (and Ontario) to the position of economic leadership that has been frittered away by recent governments. (The bulk of the damage, of course, took place under Ms. Wynne’s predecessor, Dalton McGuinty, whose nine years of economic mismanagement included inaction on the steady decline in infrastructure. But don’t expect her to say so).

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To this end, the Liberals will quote all sorts of fuzzy economic projections, the kind economists love to pull out of the air, and which governments love to quote: failure to act will result in billions of dollars of “congestion costs” to the economy and individual residents. Metrolinx has already started on that course with the claim that the Big Move’s anticipated costs — $477 per “average” household, rising to almost $1,000 for larger families — is less than the $1,600 in “congestion costs” they allegedly face.

They will also point to support from the business community, which likes the costing plan because they won’t have to pay much of it, and from regional politicians who smell all that money and can’t wait for a piece of it (especially given that the province, not them, will take the blame for collecting it.)

Ms. Wynne seems to think she has up to a year to prepare for her side of the argument, during which she plans more consultations with all the usual “stakeholders”. She may be a bit optimistic in that regard.

Whether this flies is the big question. The opposition will have a strong case to make, focused mainly around the issue of trust.

This is the government, after all, that has overseen a decade in steady economic decline; that pours billions into subsidies for an energy plan that subsidizes windmills to produce unneeded power it has to pay Quebec and the U.S. to take off its hands; that spent $600 million (and counting) to shut two gas plants in the midst of an election for purely partisan reasons; that imposed a health tax on the promise the money would only go to healthcare costs, but now funnels it into general revenues for unspecified spending; that spent billions on an e-health system that still doesn’t work; and that just recently launched a provincewide revamp of its lottery operations, just to fire its boss and bring it to a screaming halt part-way through.

And those are just a few examples. There’s also the question — which seems not to have permeated the public consciousness yet — of whether it will all work. As the e-health disaster showed, just spending billions on a proposal doesn’t guarantee the promised results will appear. The Metrolinx plan is rife with bold talk of “an integrated transportation system that enhances our quality of life, our environment and our prosperity,” but whether any of it will end the daily gridlock on the 401 remains open to question. Toronto’s effort to build just one small piece of the plan, a streetcar corridor on St. Clair Ave., ended in five years of controversy that cost double the original estimate. The Metrolinx money, if approved, will definitely be spent. It will be decades before the results are clear.

Ms. Wynne seems to think she has up to a year to prepare for her side of the argument, during which she plans more consultations with all the usual “stakeholders”. She may be a bit optimistic in that regard. But you’d have to be an optimist to pitch an election on the basis of $50 billion in new spending, extracted from an electorate that has seen far too much of its money wasted already.

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